Chicago Provides Unique “Classroom” for Students: Photogallery

Monday, 15 August 2011

ChicagoQuest is a four-week residential experience offered every summer for academically-motivated high school seniors and for incoming Trinity freshmen. Students live and study in the global city of Chicago and explore the many opportunities for learning, serving, and experiencing culture.

Students earn three college credits in either Art and World Religions or American and Western Civilization. Classroom learning is reinforced through visits to area museums and galleries, such as the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Growing spiritually happened in this community as students shared devotions, prayed, worshipped, and served together. This year’s service project at the Greater Chicago Food Depository built camaraderie among the students as they worked alongside hundreds of others to prepare registration packs for participants in the local Hunger Walk.

Vice President for Student Development Ginny Carpenter serves as the program’s director. She and her husband Jeff, program coordinator, worked with this year’s resident assistant, Jess Timmermans ’14 of Palos Heights, Illinois, to ensure an exceptional residential experience for participants.

“The key to ChicagoQuest is the broad experience students get as individuals while at the same time sharing the experience,” said Carpenter. “Students are most surprised by the relationships they form and the realization of self-sufficiency.”

Students enjoyed the autonomy of choosing how they spent their free time, whether doing homework, hopping a train to Chinatown, hanging out at the beach, or simply gathering together in their common residence to talk.

Carpenter said that even students from Chicago and the surrounding suburbs get to know the city in a way they probably haven’t experienced.

Participant and incoming Trinity freshman Luke Martin of Chicago, said, “ChicagoQuest was a lot of fun. Living and learning in the city was a great way to start my college experience.”

For more information about the ChicagoQuest program, e-mail ginny.carpenter@trnty.edu or call 708.239.4703. To view the 2011 brochure, click here. The 2012 program information will be available soon.